Systems Theory is a field of study that crosses a range of disciplines, everything from ecology to economics. It looks for patterns common to all sorts of systems, whether they have to do with how families function, how the body regulates itself or what have you. Though these are all very different kinds of systems, still, there are things about how they function as systems that are the same.
For instance, many systems are self-correcting; that is, they respond to small changes in their parts, so as to maintain equilibrium in the system as a whole.
When you overheat, for example, sweat appears on your skin as your body tries to cool itself through evaporation. Systems theory would call this a form of negative feedback, something the system’s doing to limit change and maintain equilibrium.
Interestingly, sometimes negative feedback causes unintended consequences that intensify the changes, rather than mitigate them. If my temperature has risen because I’m embarrassed, the sweat stains under my arms may actually increase my embarrassment, causing my temperature not to fall but to rise.
This is sometimes called a revenge effect. When email was introduced into the workplace, it was expected to reduce paper consumption. It turns out, however, that now, since everyone in the office can print a copy of the memo, they all do. The revenge effect of email is that paper consumption has risen, not declined.
All this provides us a helpful way of thinking about something theologians call “the doctrine of original sin.”
Original sin refers to the Bible’s teaching that human beings are born sinful, not by choice but by nature, and because of this, we need God to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, that is, to save us from sin.
This teaching comes from the book of Genesis, where it describes the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Christians have always interpreted this story as an explanation for why human beings, as Adam and Eve’s descendants, are sinful, and how they got to be that way.
While this seems straight forward enough, it raises all sorts of questions about who Adam and Eve actually were, historically, and why I should be held accountable for something that happened thousands of years ago.
This is where Systems thinking comes in handy. Spiritually speaking, you might say, sin is not something we do as much as it is a system we’re part of, which, try as we might to change it, continually adjusts to maintain equilibrium.
Suppose, for instance, I learn about child soldiers being used to fight a civil war in a foreign country, and in an effort to do good, I start a social media campaign to bring the practice to an end. What if the reason the war is being fought is because that country is a source of the rare minerals needed to create cell phones and other wireless devices. Then in a twisted way, my social media campaign is actually perpetuating the war I’m trying to end, by creating demand for all those cell phones.
Maybe I install solar panels hoping to curb climate change, only to discover that no one knows what to do with the toxic waste produced by making solar panels. Maybe I try to curb gluttony by eating well, only to become prideful of my physique...
In the language of systems theory, we might say, sin is a negative feedback loop in the human system that makes it impossible for us, really, to “do good,” because the revenge effects of our best efforts seem only to cause other problems.
However we frame the doctrine of original sin, the point is that there is something very serious gone wrong in human nature that we just can’t fix ourselves. And like one Christian writer put it, this is the one Christian doctrine for which we have ample proof.
The Bible says it like this, that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Of course, it also goes on to promise that “All, too, are justified by his grace through Jesus Christ.”
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